Month: January 2013

So I’m reading a news article (rare) when I come across this article about some chick (is that politically correct?) who got swept away (literally).

I think the point of the article was to confirm that the woman didn’t end up falling off the corner of the earth but it got me thinking about the true meaning of this video. You really need to take a minute to watch this. You can start watching at 30 seconds in to get the point.

At first I chuckled the same way as the 99% of the other people watching and filming and did a short belly laugh when the goofy sounding drunk college student said these words

Dude. Somebody should probably go save her.

So I watched the video again and noticed that not only were there many people standing around on the other side of the torrent but there were a lot of voices near the camera too.

Nobody went to save her.

Then I started thinking about his words ‘somebody’.

Who is somebody? Isn’t the goofy voice guy somebody? Oh… I get it. It’s the ‘general somebody’. It’s the same ‘somebody’ we blame for all of the mishaps and failings of the world.

“Somebody should run for politics who isn’t corrupt.”

“Somebody should really come up with a win-win way of doing business.”

Somebody‘s best friend is ‘they‘. They and somebody are clones – one and the same person.

“They should really do something about the government wastage in this country.”

“They should really create legislation to stop large corporations from ruining people’s lives.”

“I heard that they‘ve found a cure for cancer.”

“They should really come up with a kind of computer that has higher security and doesn’t violate you privacy and get lots of viruses. Oh wait.. they did.”

It’s also interesting to note the use of ‘dude’ in this video. Is he speaking to his friend, a ‘dude’? No. He’s speaking to the ‘general dude’ which in turn means that he’s speaking out loud to himself and anyone else who might like to hear his thoughts. Here are a few more examples of such usage of ‘dude’:

“Dude! Check out that couple tongue wrestling by the mailbox.”

“Oh, dude. I can’t believe I forgot my textbook.”

“Dude…. *tokes reefer*… I’m like so stoned.”

So, in a complete sports-commentary-style analysis of Goofy-Guy’s statement:

Dude: I’m now vocalizing and pointing attention my internal thoughts so others can hear and discuss them

Somebody: someone other than myself, the general somebody, the un-faced somebody upon whom I blame for the bad things of the world

should: a word that removes certainty, a conditional recommendation, a suggestion to be considered but not necessarily acted upon

go save her: the command given to go and save this woman from a frozen posterior and possibly death

Why didn’t Goofy-Guy just turn to his friend and say ‘GO SAVE HER!’ It’s obvious she needed saving. She was rocketing down a street in frozen water, unable to stop, freezing her butt cheeks off. He didn’t say this because it would project the responsibility and guilt of not doing the right thing onto someone else. That might make them feel uncomfortable. And making someone feel uncomfortable in Canada is akin to genocide.

Why didn’t he say “I’M GOING TO SAVE HER!” Because he didn’t care enough. The empathy level towards this woman was enough to vocalize concern but not enough to take action. His conscience at least recognized he should do something but he was more concerned about staying warm and hanging with his friends, while assuming that Mr. Somebody was already taking care of her salvation somewhere down this newly-formed river.

Dude. Somebody should probably go save her.

Just when you thought Goofy-Guy and Torrential Tracy had been analyzed enough, I started thinking again. The image of this woman standing strong, yet in an obviously stupid position of risk, and then being swept away to possible destruction stuck in my mind.

Why was Torrential Tracy standing there in the first place? Why was she trying to cross? Was she showing her bravery? Was she late for her class?

And where were her friends of reason standing on the side screaming at her to stop being stupid and come back to safety? Maybe she was alone.

I started thinking of the foolishness of youth. We put ourselves in obvious risk of danger every day. Where are the wise elders to stop us from wading out into the torrents? Where is the voice of reason? And when we slip and foolishly get swept into the sea of sin and destruction, where are the people to reach out a hand?

So there I am typing an email to someone who sits somewhere between a friend, an acquaintance and a business partner. I had begun the email typing very quickly, not even taking the time to hit the shift key to capitalize his name.

At the end of the email, as is customary, I nailed the shift key and typed my ‘W’. That’s short for ‘Wayne’ if you are curious. Just before I pressed send, I realized that my recipient’s name was underlined by the browser’s spell check feature, but my ‘W’ wasn’t. Immediately, I thought ‘This will look bad if my name is capitalized but his name is not.”

Then the real thought struck me:

Why are the names of mortals like us capitalized at all?

I did a search in a major search engine and to my surprise, I couldn’t find an article on this topic. I could find many articles about how and when to use capital letters, but not why we use them.

I can understand capitalizing God’s name because God is God – He is worthy of a capital letter -He created the heavens, the earth and all that is therein. But not me. Nope. I’m not worthy of a capital letter – my poop stinks and I talk too much. I’m not worthy of having my name distinguished as if I have done some great thing in this world. And even if I had done some great thing in this world that some human thought was important, did that warrant a capital like God? Did I create flowers and DNA and the stars and the moon or a newborn babe or the eagle soaring in the air? Methinks not.

Don’t get me wrong. I think people are important. I think they are so important that God sent His own Son Jesus to die for them, for crying out loud; You don’t see Him doing that for pigs or cows – not that they don’t have their place in creation. So people are dearly important. However, I think it’s arrogance and ego that started the capital letters on people’s names. Let’s humble ourselves a bit and not think of ourselves as so great.

So, starting today, I encourage you to start removing the capital letter from all these people’s names. If they would allow you to put their thoughts and the rotten condition of their heart on a big screen, the world would quickly see (in HD quality) that they do not deserve a capital letter. So, backspace, type your boss’ names again without the capital. Be sure to include a link to this article so they don’t blame you for this act of what they will probably consider defiance, rudeness or lack of English language proficiency.

If you don’t buy into the theological reasons for killing the crapitals, at the end of the day, think how much faster you could type if you didn’t have to hit the bloody shift key for every ‘proper name’.

I think it’s interesting how most people who claim to care about freedom don’t have a ham radio (amateur radio) license, especially you folks in open source.

You reject and rebel against the Monopolists in Redmond and the Fruit Devices from Cupertino recognizing that they are dictating how you will and will not use the thing you are spending all your money on.

You recognize that it’s freaky and weird to give all the power of your privacy and information over to a company.

You think it’s insane that someone would participate in something where not paying a license fee could jeopardize a business or the functionality of someone’s day-to-day.

You relish and brag about your freedom – and rightfully so.

You are a warrior in the battle against the Man and the eyes of Big Brother.

Have I puffed you up enough? Very well, then. Get ready to be brought low.

If you don’t have a ham radio license don’t come around calling yourself a man. You are a pansy-boy, sissy-girl. And if you’re already a girl, you’re a flaky fan-girl – a Barbie Doll at best.

Real men have hams.

Real women have call signs.

Real men speak to real women with their ham radios.

The service on your cell phone (except for a 911 call) is merely leased to you by likely one of a few mobile service monopolists. If they had their way, they would also charge you for that 911 call. Until the Ubuntu Phone was announced a couple of days ago, even the operating system on that smart phone that you pack with you is owned by someone else – and the data on it – don’t kid yourself.

So don’t tell me you love freedom that much.

“Oh, but I use a dumb phone,” you say.

Nice try. Let’s see how well your dumb phone works during an earthquake or if you don’t pay your bill. But really, nice try.

A ham radio requires a little studying, but once you get it, you’ve got yourself a ‘free cell phone forever’ – if you can find someone to talk to. And that, in essence, is the root of the problem.

The only people who seem to have a ham radio are wearing Depends, on serious medication or are serious geeks – and I mean serious. That’s why I always went alone. I didn’t want anyone to find out that I hung out with these people and liked what they liked.

But lately I’ve been thinking about it. It’s almost like the whole system we live in is Anti-Ham. The test isn’t that hard… so why aren’t more people doing it? In Canada you get free custom license plates for your car with your call sign! Isn’t that reason enough? Nope. Still no one does it. You can make a free call to your family if they have licenses – unlimited airtime – for free. Not good enough. You can connect to the internet with it and speak to ham radios all around the world: you could speak to your ham-buddy climbing a mountain in South Korea from just like he’s around the corner – for free. Still not good enough.

It’s almost as if the entire system is Anti-Ham and we shouldn’t be surprised.

Ham radio gives power to the people – like Ubuntu, unions or voting. To put it in perspective, you can take away my cell phone and I can still remain connected to the world – while mobile. That’s a power I’m assuming the mobile service providers don’t want you to know or think about. I’m assuming they are not rushing around trying to help promote ham radio.

My parents have a cabin where only one cellular network works. Instead of taking my advice and getting licensed and throw a killer ham radio in their car and cabin (maybe $500-$750 capital investment?) they will likely spend well over $2400 over the next five years to get suited up with a monthly mobile plan on that network.

Hams own their own network!

Enough about this already. You get the point. Get licensed and track me down on the ham waves.

One time a woman named ‘Pam’ got very angry at me for calling her ‘Pamela’. It didn’t matter to me, but it mattered to her. It’s kind of like when you’re talking on your phone really loudly but don’t realize it until other peoples’ eye daggers start piercing your vital organs. It’s kind of like putting your dirty feet on someone’s chair. If it negatively affects others, it matters.

What about foreign words? Well, there are three choices:

Say it right or do your best trying and continually try to improve towards the correct pronunciation each time you try)

Make a word for it in your own language (like how the Americans changed ‘croissant’ to ‘crescent roll’)

Shut your pie-hole

Number three is hard if you need to talk about the subject, and number two makes you look culturally arrogant. Option number 1 is the best way to win friends and influence people – say it right or die trying.

Let’s run the scenario with a name. Let’s choose a Korean name like Eun Kyung Shin.

With option 3 (above) you will have to forever avoid talking about poor Ms. Shin. You’ll have to use words like ‘you’ and ‘her’ and ‘your friend’ and ‘your wife’. Eventually she will figure out you don’t know or can’t say the name and this will usually happen down the road and make for a more difficult recovery.

With option 2, after she says, “My name is Eun Kyung Shin” you say ‘So what’s your English name? Annie?” Enough said.

With option 1 you will embarrass the snot out of yourself trying to learn the name, but a breakthrough will eventually come and that person will love you for trying and finally getting it right.

So how is this related to Ubuntu?

It’s OO-BOON-TOO.

It’s an African word.

It matters.

Stop saying it incorrectly and demonstrating your ignorance.

Quit saying “That’s how we say it down here.” and showcasing your arrogance.

Learn it. It’s super easy. It’s easier than the version you are working so hard to defend. They are long vowel sounds that a baby can slobber. It’s all the same long u sound as in ‘cartoon’ or ‘soon’ or ‘He mooned me’.

OOOOOOOOOOOOO-

BOOOOOOOOOOON-

TOOOOOOOOOOOO

So if you ended up at this post, don’t be offended. Just learn it. Thank the person who sent you here to get schooled.

I was trying to take a break today from my week-long prolific string of posting but I was reminded of this Chinese Menu that some dude had found in China. I only remember laughing so hard that I almost peed myself. You have to understand that it’s rare that something makes me laugh that hard.

I went on a search of my inbox to find this link or attachment but it came up void. Thanks to help from Bucky Beaver from the Ubuntu Audio Cast, the search is over. Bucky Figured out that the original site had been hacked so but he had a secret copy of the booty as well as found some link within a link that works for today. I immediately converted it into a PDF (irfanbaig_com_funny_chinese_menu) so this golden nugget is never lost.

Thanks a million to the author and his comments. I will revisit this post every time I want to urinate my pants (one per quarter).

I’m baffled that this topic has been so discussed in my circle that I had to write an article to direct people to in the future. I hope that this article will save you a lot of time and energy should you have to deal with these people as customers in your food establishment or as friends in your living room.

The only tricky part will have to figure out is how to deliver this post to them without offending them. It’s the same dilemma we face when we need to let our colleague know they have something between their teeth or sewer breath. If you are like me, though, you won’t worry about offending them but will revel in the fact that you have helped them on their journey to becoming a better human. You have not offended them, you have helped them. You have added value to their life.

The discussion started between BitBar (Bitter Barista) and a customer. BitBar pointed to a lady who was sitting cross-legged on one of the chairs in his cafe. She had removed her shoes completely and was sitting on her bare feet which were in full contact with the chair. It looked as if she was in her own living room. Here is approximately how the dialogue went:

BitBar: Look at that. Isn’t that disgusting? Would you put your stinky bare feet on someone’s chair like that?

Customer: I wouldn’t do it personally but you have to let it go because that’s what girls in Vancouver do.

BitBar: Are you serious? You think it’s ok that her stinking bare feet are on my chair? Would you be alright with that if I did it in your living room?

Customer: Well, I wouldn’t do it but I’d probably accept it. I mean at least she took her shoes off

BitBar: So the dirt from the road is better on my chair than the fungus-stench from between her toes?

And the dialogue went on like that.

Let me conclude the matter for you all.

Like Public Display of Affection (PDA) (ie. french kissing, fondling, etc) some people (most) don’t want to see it. It’s simply not for public. Keep your tongue in your mouth and your hands out of other people’s pants when you’re not in a hotel or the privacy of your own home.

Your feet are no different. They are gross. They are both sick and wrong.

Look how angry the disciples got when Jesus asked them to wash His feet – And those were divine feet. Last time I looked at my feet, I felt nauseous. The last sock that was near my nose made me want to hurl.

So keep those beasts on the floor and locked safely in your shoes until you unleash them in your own home or at the beach.

I don’t usually get excited much these days because all advancements in smart phone technology seem to be coalescing to a very dangerous point – monopoly of your life and complete control over your privacy.

In Randall’s article he announced the first thing that excited me in this arena since Angry Birds – The Ubuntu Phone. He explains well about why it’s awesome. However, he only hints as to why it’s important but I wanted to make sure people started thinking about the ‘why’ right away.

No one can deny that there are currently really only two options out there for people who want to own a smart phone: Bondage Bot (Android) and Fruit Devices (Apple products).

Symbian (Nokia) seems dead. Rest in peace, by the way. You were the best before this U-Phone announcement.

Microsoft is laughable. Actually, it’s more like an uncomfortable laugh – like when you politely laugh at the socially-awkward person who inappropriately blurts something weird out as they try desperately to fit in to what’s happening.

Blackberry is App-less in Arizona (that looks like ‘appless’ without the dash which is weird, eh?).

I don’t think we need to worry too much about the latter three, but the former two do concern me.

The Fruit People from Cupertino seem to want to control their victims by telling them how they will or will not use the hardware (that they paid way too much for) and by making them think they are cool.

Team Bondage-Bot seem to make the most useful and addictive tools for our daily lives while subtly buying every small company under the sun and gathering every last piece of information about you and storing it on their servers.

Both options are freaky and I no rike it.

So, a big thank you to all the people out there in Ubuntu-Land who have given me something to be excited about again – a smart phone that leaves me with the freedom we deserve. This is Ubuntu Gangnam Style

So there I am talking to the Bitter Barista. The Bitter Barista (aka Bitter or BitBar), if you don’t know him, runs Ubuntu Central, a nick-name given to this branded cafe that hosts many of the Ubuntu Loco meetups in Vancouver. He feels it’s his job to train the public to become better people. He also believes it’s his job to filter the quality of people who go to his cafe believing that if you get rid of a few bad apples that more good apples will come. You may, therefore, not like him if you happen to be one he believes is a bad apple. Many, however, who have chosen not to get offended and hear his perspective have built lasting friendships with him and Bitter will protect them against bad apples in their life as well. Point is this – he says what he believes and gives everyone the chance to start a great relationship with him.

Bitter is also a serious believer in the Ubuntu Project. He ‘gets’ it. He started out like many people as just some dude who wanted his computer to run better and more securely but then discovered the bigger picture. He’s not a super technical guy but appreciates and knows how to relate to those who are. He’s serious about doing whatever it takes to make Ubuntu the driving force behind how we relate to our technology and making sure we’re not getting unknowingly (or knowingly) abused. He believes that “the Ubuntu brand and public perception is key to pulling more people into Ubuntu-land” as he said and, “A few bad Ubuntu apples can make a barista really bitter.”

So there I am, talking to Bitter. He starts telling me this story. I asked him if I could record and transcribe it so it’s bang-on accurate and he agrees. *Disclaimer: the audio transcription you are about to read may or may not have been perfectly transcribed and some off-colour comments have been removed to keep it family-friendly.

So this dude comes in for a coffee. First of all, he annoys me at the till. He’s with this quiet girl and is clearly trying to impress her by being ultra-casual with me and trying to force some small talk and act like he’s my buddy. Then he orders a drink for himself but not a drink for the girl. This guy should have kept workin’ the girl until she gave in and ordered something. You could totally tell she wanted a hot chocolate. So this dude doesn’t even buy the girl he’s with a drink. Fail. I’m bitter. And once I’m bitter, you can’t fix it without a lot of hard work. Who is this guy anyways? So I stop talkin’ to him as soon as possible by pretending to wipe counters. Thankfully another customer came who was boring and predictable because it was a big improvement over Loudmouth.

A little while later, I notice out of my peripheral vision that Loudcakes is heading for the door with Victim-girl. Phew! Thank goodness. So I prepare to not interact with him to make sure he doesn’t think I want to be his buddy. Then, to my dismay I hear this annoying, loud voice ring out,

“Hey! Where’d you get THIS?” holdin’ up an Ubuntu Vancouver Loco marketing page. I don’t see what he’s talking about, so I say,

“What, man? Where’d I get what?”

“This!” he says holding up the Ubuntu brochure.

“Oh, that. I’m a member of Ubuntu Vancouver. In fact we use this cafe for various events.”

“Do you commit, man?” he yells. I look at the girl whose eyes also gloss over.

“Commit? What are you talking about?”

“Commit!” He says again louder and more annoyingly.

“Dude. I commit to many things. Why are asking me this?”

“Commit code, man!” He attempts to clarify.

“What are you TALKING about, man? Are you asking me if I’m a programmer or something?”

“Yeah!” he happily beams.

“No. I’m a user of the software and a member of the Ubuntu community.”

“Oh. You’re just a user.” he says somewhat disappointed.

“No, man. I’m not ‘just a user’. I’m a user and a member of the Ubuntu community. And thanks for coming. Have a good one!” I said with the nasty fake smile. Even this guy figured out it meant ‘get out and let’s end this conversation’.

What a loser. Seriously. If I met this guy and he represented, say, a coffee shop… I’d take out my pen, write down the name and location of the shop and make sure I never ended up there. I think if you just give me the power to give prison terms for talking about Ubuntu in public you’d have at least 80% more saturation in the market.

True enough that BitBar is a bit bitter, but his points are valid. Every major proprietary competitor to Ubuntu has marketing specialists they pay to make sure they project a certain image of the brand and product. This makes sure that people feel a sense of ‘pride’ related to their choice of Operating System (OS) and the people who use that OS. But they take money from every corner of the world to fund that.

Ubuntu is different.

BitBar, whether he likes Loudcakes or not, has to accept him in his family like the socially awkward uncle at the family reunion whether he likes it or not. That’s the downside of freedom.

So then how does Ubuntu brand itself and attract more family members?

With people. That’s how.

Ubuntu people need to attract more people who can attractively represent the Ubuntu brand. Simultaneously, Ubuntu needs to have a kind of marketing program/code of conduct where guys like Loudcakes can be given the tools to talk about Ubuntu in a way that doesn’t make people want to run away like from a fart in an Austin Mini. Even though I know first hand of the dangers that lurk in the Jehovah Witness faith, who can fault them for looking bad? I bet they have attracted most of their members by dressing up well and politely handing out deceptive pamphlets. They are well trained on how to act and what words to say, but also what not to say. On the occasions when I did stop to chat, they have always been polite and very well-adjusted people with a variety of racial and age representation. They ‘appear’ as a family.